Author: shakierasarai

“Oh, Fuck.” She muttered as she peeled herself off of the asphalt. Somehow her Jaegermeister flip flops had betrayed her and she fell, face first, in the Target parking lot when exiting her car. Her jaw ached.

She tried to regain her balance (and her dignity) as she walked into the department store, head spinning, eyes throbbing. She hoped no one noticed how many times she attempted to park before deciding that, despite how hard she tried, she couldn’t stay in just one designated parking space.

After a breath, she stumbled toward the door just behind a young, well put together mom. Super Mom somehow managed to match her fitted, blue and white striped sweater with a pair of pink pumps, while her drooling mini-human was strapped to her chest. In her purse: organic gluten-free snacks and a green pressed juice; breakfast for mommy and baby. Super mom looked over at our heroine, as she wiped a dried, red stain from the corner of her mouth. Blood? Taco sauce? Last night’s lipstick? It was hard to say…

Super Mom picked up her pace. The polarization of the two young women was simultaneously hilarious and depressing.

Our heroine, (still drunk?), entered the department store, made a beeline to the bathroom, and vomited violently in the sink.

June 23, 2017 – It’s a Friday, my favorite day of the week…. an ending, and a beginning.

I sit stuck in my own excrement, frozen in fear. It is dark, cold, damp here.

A Cave, built over thousands of years with weakly fallen tears… expanding and dissolving into this infinite dark.

I’ve tried to escape. My moral compass is defiant, refusing to settle… She rotates ceaselessly and I am reeling. “EVOLUTION”, I titled my clumsy dance. “Maturity”, I laughed. “A revolution!”, I cried when I turned to the jagged cave wall painted a phoenix:

with the venom I’d spat, I painted her golden frame, with tears I’d spilled, I softened soil for a strong foundation that held impermeable walls surrounding her, I painted her eyes with blood spilled in my sparring with those I’d confided in, I detailed every feather with vomit triggered by my fear of failure, or perhaps my power.

…Some came back up after said bourbon… Off the Queensboro bridge as the cab driver cringed.

Some got lost in the Facebook newsfeed. Fighting the constant updates and climbing the social media ladder towards relevancy.

Some hid in the shadows of a selfie.

Others found themselves bouncing on the nooks and crannies of cellulite. On my thighs, my ass, my stomach. The years of demotivation had atrophied my muscles and added self loathing to my once tight frame. My disappointments jiggled with every step.

Still, one large piece clung on, as we lie back to back, silent. Angry. Hurt. She whispered scornful reminders of all the mistakes I had made. The ways I self sabotage, the patterns I am doomed to repeat.

She tore at my chest and clanged against my sternum, begging for validation. I tried to mend the many wrongs and fix the pieces, but just like now; my words betrayed me, and the single piece, all that was left, gripping to my ribcage like a desperate hiker clinging to a cliff…

I’m just “there”, sucking up the air by your said to make you feel less

on the outside.

I’m starving.

When they’ve forgotten the years I’ve littered Earth

You could always mark the time

By the string of men I’ve played and hurt.

They couldn’t be together if they had to be themselves.

I think you love me because I’m the only one left standing.

While your dreams were burning, they fled your shelter. Now I stand in the ashes of your foundation.

Believing in you wholeheartedly. Waiting for our next step. Loving you when you think there is nothing left to love.

It isn’t me you love… there just isn’t anyone else around.

She said to me, “I can’t be with someone who doesn’t believe in God.”

I told her I couldn’t be with someone who didn’t have Faith.

She never felt loved, because she never believed she was worth loving.

I don’t love him. I don’t think I love anyone. But it felt nice to pretend for a night… that I could be one of these “nice” girls… with boyfriends, instagrams and families… Something precious, innocent and sweet. Something worth protecting.

I played my part well; the naive, the blameless, the victim, the pure… I covered my scares in a flowing white dress, I said words of love and affirmation with convincing tamber, as if fore the first time. I tightened as he entered me, telling him, “It’s been so long”, “I never do this” “No one has ever been this big, this good, this ___”.

Meanwhile praying he hadn’t kept count of the Magnums in the drawer, or noticed a golden wrapper catching the moonlight in my trashcan.